Mentallogenic

The Amsterdam-based Venezuelan-Portuguese producer, musical auteur and DJ Alex Figueira had a stint playing percussion for Altın Gün and certainly knows how to write an exotic press release. He claims he recorded Mentallogenic in ‘a feverish dream, fuelled by the kaleidoscopic motion of the cosmos, ancient meteor showers, and visions of forgotten interstellar South American gods’ after he had started to hear ‘uncanny metallic vibrations and eerie melodies of untraceable origins’ in his head. The result is an album full of inventive ideas fusing African, Caribbean and Latin rhythms with vintage soul, funk, psychedelia and electronica into a style that is hard to categorise but one might dub ‘digi-tropical’. Playing every instrument himself, each of the nine compositions starts with a rhythm track over which he adds enticingly weird sonic curlicues. It's undeniably fun, although in places it can sound like a stellar backing track waiting for someone like Manu Chao to sprinkle a few catchy tunes over it. Yet don't let that put you off for there are plenty of sonic thrills here and if Figueira can find some smart guests to collaborate with, his next album could be sensational.